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There are many more readers than members

04-10-2010, 10:33 PM

Seriously, last I checked this is the only forum that has so many linux amd/ati devs around, this makes this forum somewhat more important than others. So you must understand that gordboy's statement that there are many more readers than members is more than true here and the administrators in my opinion need to better understand the difference between useful and useless feedback.

This forum is full of crap about how the new git-97342 version of a driver gives +25fps on glxgears, or if it is not that, it is the procedure of how to compile mesa/kernel/libdrm/radeon again and again and again. Whenever I want to read something useful I have to dig through the posts for amd dev responses or from a few respected/selected members.

By banning gordboy, is like saying we don't want experienced people here and only the "monkey auto bots" that repeat the same questions and the same answers again and again (but they are polite).

In the end, gordboy was banned the moment he said that he will not be banned. This is the worst reaction of forum moderator I have ever seen in my internet life.

Enough about gordboy, I hope he comes back to bring balance.

Now about the radeon driver. The very long release time of a stable release is bad especially when it does not affect stability. The very first moment I tried 6.13 I found a critical desktop bug (as radeon is just for that, desktop) that also existed in the 1 year ago release.

It doesn't really matter what the bug is because my point here is different, it was bad enough though that made me to come back once again to fglrx which we all know lacks features, 2d speed etc, but at least is stable.

The oss driver is progressing very slow and completely out-of-sync compared to the hardware advancements, remains buggy, and it also can't be deployed easily (updates for example). Intel doesn't have that problem, because they don't care that much and are not in hurry about 3d, speed and fancy features, and nvidia has a just-works-binary that solves all the problems an administrator and user can ask. The driver shouldn't be bundled in distros like an ALSA audio driver. Graphics don't work that way.

I think that amd oss driver needs to be radically changed I didn't believe it one year ago, I believe it now.

I don't know if this will involve forks or new developers or self-made APIs or self-made xorg/modules or even have the project completely canceled and do it the nvidia-way.

Anyone that knows how to appreciate good competitive organized open-source software, for sure does not like this driver.

I don't have much experience with these matters, and I'd be the first to admit it. But as I have said in other threads, I think the best thing the Linux community can do is abandon the fglrx drivers and put our time and energy (if available) into the Radeon drivers.

The Radeon drivers, even with their slow and partial 3D support, are much a better fit for desktop Linux than the fglrx drivers. This would be true even if ATi put as much time and energy into the flgrx drivers as Nvidia. The fglrx drivers seem to be blisteringly fast at 3D and little else and is this is by design.

The desktop Linux community needs to begin to take the Radeon drivers seriously because they actually do what we want. They play video, they work out of the box, and they support almost all of X.org's advanced features.

Comment

I don't have much experience with these matters, and I'd be the first to admit it. But as I have said in other threads, I think the best thing the Linux community can do is abandon the fglrx drivers and put our time and energy (if available) into the Radeon drivers.

The Radeon drivers, even with their slow and partial 3D support, are much a better fit for desktop Linux than the fglrx drivers. This would be true even if ATi put as much time and energy into the flgrx drivers as Nvidia. The fglrx drivers seem to be blisteringly fast at 3D and little else and is this is by design.

The desktop Linux community needs to begin to take the Radeon drivers seriously because they actually do what we want. They play video, they work out of the box, and they support almost all of X.org's advanced features.

I have done that, I have helped radeon with bug reports and debugging, but I no longer care and I won't on purpose, because right now the work that is done is negative. And AMD must understand that and do something asap.

The radeon project goal right now has nothing to do with the reality. One year ago I dreamed that today we would have a driver with everything better (better = not only more features and fancy 3d effects, but also less bugs) than fglrx except 3D.

But still, today radeon has worse power managament than fglrx (so forget laptops which is like what, 85% of the desktop market?), has experimental 3D, and has buggy xv video that is still inferior to fglrx's gl output.

Yes I know there is work in progress to fix these things, but so was one year ago, "soon soon soon in the meantime try the git commit etc" crap.

Is there a ticket number for the critical bug you mentioned ?

The truth is that I haven't looked and I don't care! I am an fglrx user once again, and from my sayings you must have already understood that I prefer this project to die than to continue with the same way.

So even if I have done bug reports in the past, finding a critical desktop bug in the first hour of testing in a new release after almost a year made me change my mind.

The project right now is the ultimate failure. It satisfies noone but the the "monkey auto bots" that blindly believe in ATI/AMD/OSS salvation.

Monkey auto bot #1

I see drama, I see FUD. Hope you all enjoy it, because I do not.

Monkey auto bot #2

LOL FGLRX=stable LOL LOL!!!

LOL! LOL!LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!!

LOL! LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!

you are kidding!

if you want the same feeling you need to aktivate direct2D in the FGLRX

but! if you do that to become the same good opensourcdriver feeling the FGLRX isn't stable anymore! because dirct2D isn't ready yet!

over my last 4 years i stand on ati/amd-linux side the fglrx was never ever stable!

in no time never ever stable!

thats because normally i use 'kde' and fglrx is focus on gnome!

Comment

The radeon project goal right now has nothing to do with the reality. One year ago I dreamed that today we would have a driver with everything better (better = not only more features and fancy 3d effects, but also less bugs) than fglrx except 3D.

Well, **** you (your language-level?). You're not the only user. YOU may be dreaming about proper power management, but others just don't care.

Kind regards,
Monkey auto bot #3

Comment

gordboy-fan, you really have three options here with respect to the open source driver development.

One is that you can do a deep dive and learn about the driver internals, in which case you will then understand that the work done over the last year, while maybe not producing a lot of the things you wanted, was an essential pre-requisite for the user-visible features you *do* want like power management and improved 3D.

The second option is to learn to trust the developers a bit more, and accept that maybe there was a good reason for the last two years of rearchitecture work even if you don't fully understand the reasons yourself.

The third option is to ignore the underlying issues and the rationale for moving to a new architectural base and focus only on the immediately user-visible benefits, but than you will be choosing to stay out of touch with the reality of the development effort and will remain unhappy with the open source driver work until it "suddenly and magically" turns into what you always wanted and you find yourself looking for a reason that things "improved so quickly" after what seemed like a year or more of wasted effort.

Comment

gordboy-fan, you really have three options here with respect to the open source driver development.

...

I guess there's a fourth option as well - do the deep dive from #1, conclude that you still don't agree with the technical direction, and raise the issues in terms of release plans and design decisions / priorities *before* the work is done.

One of the reasons gordboy came across as a potential troll was that his demands for a driver release didn't start until the release process was already underway and the first RC had already been published.